Turning Points

The temperature in Stalingrad on February 2, 1943 is minus 25 degrees Celsius. The city is rubble. The buildings that were a Soviet industrial center in the summer of 1942 are now gray shells, their interiors gutted by five months of fighting at distances measured in meters. The streets are littered with the frozen dead of both armies, left where they fell because neither side had the manpower to collect them.

Black and white photograph of Allied soldiers landing on a beach under fire during the Normandy landings, June 1944.

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Contents — 6 sections

OPENING SCENE
THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY
EL ALAMEIN
STALINGRAD
KURSK: THE LAST GERMAN GAMBLE
THE TIDE TURNS

OPENING SCENE

Soviet soldiers moving through rubble during the Battle of Stalingrad — Soviet soldiers advance through the ruins of Stalingrad during the street-by-street fighting that consumed the city between August 1942 and February 1943. The battle for Stalingrad became the symbolic turning point of the entire war on the Eastern Front — and perhaps of the whole conflict — as the German Sixth Army was encircled, starved, and finally forced to surrender.Bundesarchiv / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.0

In the basement of a ruined Univermag department store on Ploshchad Pavshikh Bortsov (the Square of Fallen Fighters), Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus and his staff have been sheltering for days. They have no food. They have no fuel for heating. They have been eating what could be scavenged from the ruins of a city that has itself been stripped of everything. Communications with Berlin have been intermittent. Hitler has promoted Paulus to the highest rank in the German military, sent with the implicit message that a Prussian officer of that rank does not let himself be taken alive.

Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus in Soviet captivity after the surrender at Stalingrad, February 1943 — Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus in Soviet captivity following the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943 — Hitler had promoted him to Field Marshal just one day earlier, in the expectation that no German Field Marshal would surrender. Paulus became one of the most prominent German generals to publicly condemn the Nazi regime while a prisoner of war.Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-F0316-0204-005 / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Paulus does not take his own life. His chief of staff, General Arthur Schmidt, sends a last radio message to Army Group Don: the 6th Army has ceased fighting. Soviet officers receive the formal surrender in the department store basement. Paulus and his staff are led into captivity. Of the approximately 91,000 soldiers who surrender in the final days, approximately 5,000–6,000 will eventually return to Germany — some not until the mid-1950s. The rest will die of disease, starvation, and the brutal conditions of Soviet captivity.

The news reaches Berlin in the early morning of February 2. Hitler orders three days of national mourning. Radio stations play funeral music. For the first time since the war began, the German government is publicly acknowledging a catastrophic defeat. The psychological impact in Germany is enormous: this is a moment that every historian who interviewed German civilians about when they first believed Germany might lose the war points to as the turning point. Before Stalingrad, most Germans believed the Wehrmacht was invincible. After Stalingrad, they could no longer be certain.

LOCKED AFTER THE PREVIEW

What's in the rest of Day 4

THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY
EL ALAMEIN
STALINGRAD
KURSK: THE LAST GERMAN GAMBLE
THE TIDE TURNS

Day 5 covers the endgame: D-Day and the liberation of France, the fall of Berlin, the Pacific island-hopping campaign, and the atomic bombs. The question on Day 5 isn't whether the Allies win — it's how the war ends, and at what cost. The answer involves the largest seaborne invasion in history, the most destructive bombing campaigns ever conducted, and two weapons that changed what war could mean.

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Turning Points

OPENING SCENE

Soviet soldiers advance through the ruins of Stalingrad during the street-by-street fighting that consumed the city between August 1942 and February 1943. The battle for Stalingrad became the symbolic turning point of the entire war on the Eastern Front — and perhaps of the whole conflict — as the German Sixth Army was encircled, starved, and finally forced to surrender.Bundesarchiv / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus in Soviet captivity following the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943 — Hitler had promoted him to Field Marshal just one day earlier, in the expectation that no German Field Marshal would surrender. Paulus became one of the most prominent German generals to publicly condemn the Nazi regime while a prisoner of war.Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-F0316-0204-005 / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA 3.0

What's in the rest of Day 4

THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY

EL ALAMEIN

STALINGRAD

KURSK: THE LAST GERMAN GAMBLE

THE TIDE TURNS